North Korea's healthcare system

warcrime:https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-us-war-crime-north-korea-wont-forget/2015/03/20/fb525694-ce80-11e4-8c54-ffb5ba6f2f69_story.html?utm_term=.9237af78d261

“….The bombing was long, leisurely and merciless, even by the assessment of America’s own leaders. “Over a period of three years or so, we killed off — what — 20 percent of the population,” Air Force Gen. Curtis LeMay, head of the Strategic Air Command during the Korean War, told the Office of Air Force History in 1984. Dean Rusk, a supporter of the war and later secretary of state, said the United States bombed “everything that moved in North Korea, every brick standing on top of another.” After running low on urban targets, U.S. bombers destroyed hydroelectric and irrigation dams in the later stages of the war, flooding farmland and destroying crops.

Although the ferocity of the bombing was criticized as racist and unjustified elsewhere in the world, it was never a big story back home. U.S. press coverage of the air war focused, instead, on “MiG alley,” a narrow patch of North Korea near the Chinese border. There, in the world’s first jet-powered aerial war, American fighter pilots competed against each other to shoot down five or more Soviet-made fighters and become “aces.” War reporters rarely mentioned civilian casualties from U.S. carpet-bombing. It is perhaps the most forgotten part of a forgotten war.

The Kims, though, have kept memories of the war and the bombing terrifyingly fresh. North Korean state media dress up the historical record in a Big Lie, claiming that Americans and South Korea sneakily started the Korean War and that Kim Il Sung brilliantly won it against overwhelming odds. (The Chinese don’t get much credit for fighting the United States to a draw.) State media warn that, sooner or later, the Americans will strike again.
“It is still the 1950s in North Korea and the conflict with South Korea and the United States is still going on,” says Kathryn Weathersby, a scholar of the Korean War. “People in the North feel backed into a corner and threatened.”

There is real value in understanding this paranoid mind-set. It puts the calculated belligerence of the Kim family into context. It also undermines the notion that North Korea is merely a nut-case state.

Since World War II, the United States has engaged in an almost unbroken chain of major and minor wars in distant and poorly understood countries. Yet for a meddlesome superpower that claims the democratic high ground, it can sometimes be shockingly incurious and self-absorbed. In the case of the bombing of North Korea, its people never really became conscious of a major war crime committed in their name.

Paying attention in a democracy is a moral obligation. It is also a way to avoid repeating immoral mistakes.

And if North Korea ever does change, if the Kim family were overthrown or were to voluntarily loosen its chokehold on information, a U.S. apology for the bombing could help dispel 65 years of hate.”

Billy_T wrote:

IMO, we were the bad guys in Korea — with, of course, individual exceptions. We never should have gone. We escalated the war beyond all reason. And because of it, 2-4 million Korean civilians died. And we sided with a fascist thug dictator in the South. He had already slaughtered innocent civilians prior to our invasion, and we looked the other way when he did more of the same.

Not saying the North were the “good guys” either. But we definitely weren’t in the aggregate, from the standpoint of the powers that be. And the government in the South definitely wasn’t.

There’s a pattern, as mentioned in the article. We try our best to crush anyone who dares say no to capitalism, destroy their economy, embargo them, isolate them, and then when they have problems due to OUR destructive policies, we shout “See!! Their system can never work!! They’re brutal dictators and oppress their people!!”

Um, if we had actually lent them a helping hand instead of trying to crush them, it’s a good bet they wouldn’t have had to turn inward and go all in for “law and order,” etc.

That’s what being under siege does to a country. Just look at the way the West changed their laws during WWI and WWII. Pretty much every country in Europe, if they weren’t already taken over by the Germans, imposed their own oppressive rule. Again, that’s what being under siege does to nations.

We blew a once in a century chance when we didn’t take the peace dividend after WWII. We really could have been an agent for good instead of ill all over the globe and here. Just no more wars. No more coups. No more military proliferation and arms proliferation. Invest in humans and the planet. This shit isn’t rocket science!

=================

The mainstream-american narrative is that North Korea ‘started’ the war by invading the South.

Is that more or less true, or is there much more to it than that? Are there other ‘legitimate’ narratives?

Of course even if North Korea started it, that doesnt justify recklessly killing a gazillion civilians. Or does it?

w
v

• This reply was modified 7 years, 1 month ago by wv.